


So Goes the Days Before the Flood

by Riathel



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Fluff, Insecurity, M/M, Morning After, Possessive Behavior, Pre-Serial: s062 The Sea Devils, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:34:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24322120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riathel/pseuds/Riathel
Summary: There are times the Doctor wants to look at him afterwards. Fewer still are the times when the Doctor wants to touch him.This is a time of both.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Third Doctor/The Master (Delgado)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 33





	So Goes the Days Before the Flood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [extryn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/extryn/gifts).



> I’ve been getting writer’s block on some other WIPs, and thinking about these two disaster angst gays has helped. Based on the premise that the Doctor has been visiting the Master in prison after hours, for purely platonic reasons.

Few are the times when the Doctor wants to look at him afterwards. Fewer still are the times the Doctor wants to touch him. 

This is a time of both.

He’s not even curled up this time, stretched out and luxuriating, like it could be so easy. For the most part, he keeps his clever hands tucked behind his head, resting on the pillow; all long and lanky, he might reach forever.

The Master wants to touch him. But it will break their peace. It feels like an ache. Sometimes, it causes him to doubt these spare moments that they spend together. That shouldn’t be right. A master shouldn’t have doubts, shouldn’t have anything so base as  _regrets_. He runs his thumb down the sheet, tracing the coarse linen as though his brain might be so easily smoothed. As though he could retain his sense of self. No. It couldn’t be so simple. _They_ can’t be so simple. Can they? 

He almost knows what he wants to say, where he wants to touch and be touched, when the Doctor says, softly, “I ought to be leaving.”

The Master stiffens, but the Doctor’s face isn’t regretful. It’s thoughtful. Pleased, even. The Master hasn’t seen the Doctor pleased for… well. The  _ Master _ hasn’t.

“Very well,” he says, affecting ease, wit, charm; old costumes well worn. He teases: “Do return in the  _ daytime _ once or twice, won’t you?”

The Doctor chuckles. It vibrates through the thin prison bed, and through the Master. He wonders if he’s been rendered hollow, resounding with every noise that hums into the space between them.

“I’ll make an effort,” the Doctor promises. As much of a promise as he’s ever been capable of. The Master wants to pin him to that; wants to pin him to this bed; wants to pin him to his own hearts, to the eternities that he has long been denied.

Instead, he just smiles in the darkness and concedes, “If you manage to fit it into your busy schedule, that is.” His smile feels a touch strained, a levee cracking at the crown.

There’s a silence. No more laughter, then. The slender balance has been pushed too far; the Doctor will utter some cutting remark, storm out — perhaps he won’t return for a week, a month. But he will come crawling back, inevitably. And if not, the Master will crack open the walls of this paltry cage, and find him, and remind him of the permanency of his promises. The Master will bend the Doctor until neither of them have to wonder anymore. Until he knows what their destiny is.

The Doctor bends down, kisses him lightly on the forehead, and then he’s gone. The door locks behind him. Out of reach again.

Another day of this interminable waiting. The Master realises his hands are clawing into the sheet when they start aching. He might have grabbed the Doctor otherwise, wrenched him down to the floor and taken all of what he was owed.

The kiss  _ burns _ him. So much what he has craved, and yet so far away from being enough.

A master doesn’t wonder if he is forging the right path; the Master forges his own path. He  _ knows _ their destiny. He will know it, by merit of creation; the Doctor by his side, willing or otherwise. Gone is the time for self doubt.

Those times are long behind them now.

(But the feeling of that brief kiss lingers on his skin for hours to come, beyond bathing, beyond scrubbing his forehead when it itches.)


End file.
